The 6 Worst Trades Ever Made in Exchange for Sex
How much is your ass worth? Not in the per-pound meat sense of the word, or in the sense of you as a whole person if you were to be sold for your organs, or what you'll earn in your lifetime, or how you're like a priceless and unique wonderful soul. I just meant your literal ass. Or another orifice. If you were to rent the space to someone, let's say for an hour, what would that be worth?
Prostitutes came up with answers to that question many moons ago, and to this day they're still setting a value on fun-time hole rentals -- or "companionship" as some people call it -- and it's a mixed bag of morality and weirdness. Lots of people think of sex workers as victims, but not all of them are. It's just that many people don't know about or don't acknowledge that the escort business is one in which a lot of women and about five guys make a lot of money just by having sex, and they do it because they want to. There are no pimps, no step-dad with wandering hands, no drug-addicted mom who sent them astray. It happens. Some people just think of sex as a commodity and use it as such, no other explanation required. And while a Spitzer-level escort can pull in thousands of dollars for an hour of herky jerky wiggle and giggle, not everyone is charging the same price. Some are just working on the barter system.
Value Meal
Remember in Fight Club when Tyler Durden says to the narrator, "I want you to hit me as hard as you can"? Close your eyes and imagine that, but instead of hit, imagine the word "degrade" in there. Now open your eyes because I'm going to flesh out that request.
A desperate person in a desperate situation will do a lot of things. It's really only by the thinnest margin that society works at all, but under the right circumstances any of us could go buck wild and kill someone to save ourselves, rob a store to feed our families, or drop everything and flee to escape persecution. But what the Sam Hell makes you want to pork someone for a McChicken?
Of all the shameful things one could trade for sex, McDonald's probably symbolically stands head and shoulders above all else, proud and tall like the despicable, never-hump-to-get-this-stuff thing that it is. It's not that it's somehow worse in practice than sex for an equal amount of money, which I guess is like $6 or so, it's that culturally, and spiritually, McDonald's represents everything you don't want penetrating you. Tell me I'm wrong, penetration enthusiasts. McDonalds is the go-to joke restaurant when you're talking about something cheap or bad for you. Any other would do, but because of its global presence and its place in our understanding of the world at large, McDonald's is the titan of sadness. And that sadness just grows like an illicit boner at the drive-thru when you hear about someone humping for a McDinner.
Donald Jones was the John, or the Ronald or whatever you call him in this case, who was caught by officers after picking up a lady of the evening and going through the drive-thru with her. After buying a meal for his rent-a-friend, he asked how she'd pay him back for it and the whole messy transaction came to a head, as it were. When police confronted the two at a nearby park, the woman was pulling up her pants, so this was a full-on consummation deal. You'd figure McNuggets, in a moment of starvation, might be worth a handy at best, but, oh, no. This was the real deal.
Office Supplies
My day job is in an office where I wear a tie and pants that have a crease in them on purpose, and I have a novelty mug on my desk that features a cartoon dog saying "Bitches be crazy," which no one has noticed yet because if and when they do, I will have a meeting with HR about workplace sensitivity. I also have drawers full of office supplies. Do you need a paperclip? I have big ones and small ones and ones that are covered in colorful plastic, and I have literally never used a paperclip in my entire time in that office. Plus I have glue sticks, in case I become 10 years old one day.
Office supplies are abundant and, for the most part, useless to everyone. Despite that, a lawyer in Illinois was brought up on prostitution charges, which include allegations that she had sex for office supplies. If my paper clips are actually worth sex to someone, I am clearly working in the wrong office, and not just because the ladies I work with all look like John Madden at various weights during a bout of a severe stomach flu.
The lawyer, Reema Bajaj, plead guilty in 2012 to prostitution charges and later said she didn't actually accept money for sex, but now she's up on ethics charges because, and you may be surprised to learn this, a lawyer having sex for money is unethical. And, according to the charges brought against her, she put out for $70 worth of DVDs and about $70 worth of office supplies for her law office, which will probably net you a case of printer paper and some decent quality gel pens.
Grades
At first I wasn't going to include sex for grades in this article because who among us hasn't plooked a professor for a "B" once or twice? But then I thought that was the very reason to include this because, as it turns out, not many of us haven't done such a thing. Humping for higher learning is really, really popular.
A quick Google search finds a law professor in Singapore who got five months in jail for accepting tailored shirts, a snazzy pen, and some humpity jumpity from a student; a business professor in Bahrain who gave a student a zero on her midterms and then arranged a meeting to "improve" her grade, where improve in quotation marks means wiggling on his goody bag; and a high school football coach who managed to get five girls to sleep with him for better marks in whatever football coaches teach. All three were just in the past year or so.
Now, sure, with all the teachers and all the students in the world this is a relatively uncommon practice, but it happens all over the world and has happened for years. Here's an article from 1977 about hair stylists who got passing grades and their licenses in exchange for sex. Did you even know a hair stylist needed a license? What the hell happens if you style hair without a license? The mind boggles.
Point is, a lot of people in a position of authority over students quickly realize they have something students want, and the students have several things they want. And thus, the spirit of barter is born.
World Series Tickets
For the rest of her life, Susan Finkelstein will be known as the woman who tried to sell her ass to get tickets to see the Phillies and the Yankees in the 2009 World Series. Because she never actually boned anyone, the prostitution charge never stuck and, because attempted prostitution doesn't make sense and only works when you attempt and succeed to be a prostitute, she couldn't be convicted of that charge either. So, in 2011, her appeal was granted, and all charges against he were dropped. However, that doesn't mean the court said she didn't try to trade sex for World Series tickets, it mostly meant someone who does that is not now a hooker. They're just someone who tried to have sex for World Series tickets. Build one bridge, and no one calls you a bridge builder, right?
Finkelstein denied the charges despite placing an ad on Craigslist saying she was a "tall, buxom blonde" and in desperate need of World Series tickets. Police say they contacted her and asked what she was willing to pay, and she responded that her currency was "unusual" and sent some nude pictures. None of this 100 percent confirms sex, it just means that if you weren't raised in an Eastern European monastery you absolutely know she meant she'd bone you for tickets. No one ever describes themselves as buxom and desperate unless they're trying to use their tits to buy something. It's kind of irrelevant, otherwise. No one is buying Desperate Buxom Granny's Irish Stew, and if they are, they should be ashamed.
Smokes
Whether or not you agree with prostitution -- some folks dislike it on moral grounds or religious grounds, some folks don't care at all -- we can all agree that if you are going to be a prostitute, you should have some pride. The kind of pride that says no, no penis enters you for the price of two cigarettes. Do you know what two cigarettes are worth? I think maybe literally nothing.
John Kyser, a 59-year-old sheriff's deputy, whose job involved transporting inmates from the county jail to the courthouse, was arrested and charged after paying a female inmate the tidy sum of two Kools in exchange for some toots on the ol' skin flute. You can almost hear the depressing banjo porn soundtrack behind this unsavory transaction as a Kentucky sheriff's deputy, who we have to assume goes by a nickname like "Cooter" or "Gooch" in his private life, negotiated with the woman and somehow settled on a price of two cigarettes, possibly coming down from one cigarette and some roadkill stew.
While Kyser was obviously abusing his authority and being something of a scumbag, you have to wonder about the state of the woman involved and her terrible addiction to nicotine. If you want to give kids a powerful anti-smoking message, show them images of a 59-year-old Deputy trying to throw a shot in their faces in exchange for two cigarettes. That'll cut down on smoking double quick.
Murder
Selling your ass for burgers or knickknacks is one thing, but you get into some deep, philosophical shit when you try to balance the value of a human life against the value of getting it on. What's worth more to you? Would you kill for sex? Some people would, and that's kind of sad. Not because sex isn't pretty awesome or anything, but because there really should be fewer hassles in getting it. Anything you need to actually murder another human to obtain, you can do without, generally speaking. Or go elsewhere. If Wal-Mart wants you to murder someone to get that $5 DVD of The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, you go to Best Buy and get it there instead.
Even though it seems obvious that murder for sex is wrong, Charlotte Collinge convinced not one, but two guys to murder her husband on the promise of sexytime fun. She picked up the two men at a bar, and they got drunk and high on some cocaine and then went full-on crazy as she promised sex if they'd just go back to her place and beat the ever-loving shit out of her husband, which they did.
Clifford Collinge died of the wounds he sustained, and both men, as well as Charlotte, were convicted of the crime, the men each getting 18 years, a piece of the wife's 23 years. So the moral of the story is that maybe when a bar skank offers to double-team you and another dude in exchange for killing her husband, you politely finish your drink and suggest that you have laundry to do tonight, instead, so you can't partake.
